‘The Rookie’ To Release Extended Cut Of Episode 810 On Hulu In Rare Move For ABC Scripted Series

EXCLUSIVE: With Season 9 of The Rookie still six months away, fans of the popular ABC police drama are getting some extra original content to carry them through the hiatus.

An extended cut of Episode 810, “His Name Was Martin,” will be released on Hulu July 20 in the Extras section of the series’ landing page. It will contain approximately 5 1/2 minutes of additional footage.

The pivotal episode, written and directed by The Rookie creator and executive producer Alexi Hawley, features John Nolan (Nathan Fillion) and the rest of the team trying to contain a cleaning crew at Westview Psychiatric Hospital who are acting like zombies due to chemical exposure. When one of the affected workers, the eponymous Martin, violently attacks Lucy (Melissa O’Neil), she kills him in self defense, an incident that has a profound psychological and emotional impact on her.

The additional footage includes action sequences as the team tries to evade the aggressive, zombie-like workers, and a cut-for-time scene that would give context to Lucy and Tim’s (Eric Winter) emotional conversation at the end of the episode in which he consoles her.

Below, Hawley explains his decision to do the extended cut for Hulu, a first for The Rookie — and possibly an ABC scripted series. (Grey’s Anatomy used to do some of it for the DVD release of its seasons.) It is rare for a current broadcast series in general to offer an extended version of episodes on streaming.

One of the many fun things about making The Rookie is that we have such a broad playground story and tone-wise.

For 810, I knew I wanted to make something fun and scary and unexpectedly emotional. But tension takes time to play out on screen, and I found myself in the editing room with hard choices to make. I can count the number of scenes we’ve dropped in eight seasons on one hand (maybe two?), but I was up against a wall on this one.

Network run times are set in stone. But Hulu’s are not. So, I picked up the phone and pitched the idea of releasing an extended cut as a reward to our amazing fans, who are so invested in the show. Now they’ll be able to go deeper into the character journeys (especially for Tim and Lucy) and see the previously unaired scenes that enhance the episode in a unique way.  

Alexi Hawley